I was really looking forward to this game after the lost one, as I felt that I could actually compete and give a good account of myself. I was not expecting to win but I was hoping to keep the gap between scores a little closer. My opponent for this game was a space wolf army, comprised of mostly first born marines, the only primaris model being a redemptor dreadnought.
The actual list itself contained a number of different element, including Grimnar and sledge, two 6 man units of blood claws and two 6 man units of grey hunters, two long fang squads, thunder wolves, wolf guard terminators and a terminator chaplain, a tech marine and then a whole bunch of dreads, Bjorn, murder fang, a redemptor and two venerables. The only advantage I had with the vehicles and most other units in the list was their slow movent, mostly 6 inches, with only the redemptor (8"), thunder wolves and Grimnar (10" each) being quicker. Luckily the deployment map favoured me here as it opened up the no man's land to around 27 inches due to its diagonal nature.
Guard Deployment
You can just about make out the random model to the left of my tape measure, that's a priest that's sitting out to deny the deep striking terminators. My Hellhammer is also sitting back to put as much distance between him and anything that might want to shoot at him as possible turn 1. As it happened, I got turn 1 and he moved up on the left flank.
The board
The central ruins, marked by the two large and two smaller building sections were obscuring terrain, so my Hellhammer couldn't see through them but could be seen nonetheless. This did give me some issues but nothing I couldn't get around.
Space wolves deployment
Another view of the guard deployment
This time round I think the placing of objectives was significantly better and as a result I was able to hold at least 2 objectives pretty much all game, only failing in the last turn, partly due to some unlucky\lucky dice rolls but we'll get in to that later. My opponent placed his objectives down very sensibly, with the middle objective in the centre being placed in the central ruins furthest from me, thus making it a lot harder to get at for me.
Turn 2
I can't remember what shooting happened in turn one, but it wasn't very much, mostly due to the distance between the armies. I know my mortars chipped a would each of the blood claws but I think that we about it. By the end of turn two though things were a little different. My Hellhammer and survived remarkable untouched by the long fangs and the twin lascannons of Bjorn, the missile launcher long fangs actually did the majority of wounds over the game, mostly as the lascannon armed ones were removed in my second turn, one shorted by the big Hellhammer cannon. In general the there had been little damage inflicted on either side by the end of turn two. The only thing of note was the charge of Grimnar in to an infantry squad on the left and his subsequent removal from the board by the secondary armament of the Hellhammer supported by various infantry squads.
Turn 2
Some of.my scions dropped in turn 2 and tried to take out the big guy at the back but failed, reducing him down a bracket though. This is one of the mistakes I made in the game, holding on to the bring it down card for an additional turn. I should have ditched it as soon as I failed to score it in turn 2, I could have drawn an additional card I could have achieve in turn 5 as a result. If I could have drawn a line of sight from my Hellhammer it could have been very different but the two buildings in the middle prevented this.
Turn 3
Turn 3 and things were starting to heat up. The wolves were getting close now, one unit already being in combat but a number of failed charges meant that I'd had a little bit of extra time to whittle them down even more. This meant that I could take down a number of thunder wolf Calvary, dropping two but not quite managing the third. I also made a second mistake with the cards here, as I forgot I had "no retreat, no surrender" and fell a unit out of combat. I could easily have go the 5 points, even if it would have meant loosing a few more models, but it might also have changed where the terminators also dropped in, although unlikely.
It was at this point that the new abilities of the marines came in to play, their sticky objectives. In turn 3 when the MT command squad had dropped in on the backfield objective near my opponents deployment zone, he had been forces to send a squad of blood claws after them and abandon the central objective. However, with the sticky objective rule he still held on to it and scored points, without this rule he would have lost at least 14 points or been forced to pull another units, a dreadnought realistically, to hold it. This could have changed the game quite a bit and there wasn't really anything i could do about it.
Turn 3
Turn 4
It was in turn 4 that the game started to finally swing in favour of one of us. Until this point it could have go either way but there were a few moment where things didn't quite line up for me and the wolves just showed that extra resilience over the guard. For me the two moment in this turn that set the scene for the wolves victory were the terminators clearing out the centre of the last guard resistance and the failure of the Hellhammer to Clare the blood claws at the back of the table, enabling them to charge and wipe out the MT command squad and claim the objective. To be honest, there was little I could do about the terminators in the centre as I had little to reinforce my units with. The blood claws in the top corner however I could do something about. I fired the Hellhammer cannon, which up until this point had basically eliminated a squad every turn (apart from the thunder wolf Calvary, where it still took enough wounds to remove a 5 man unit but not enough to wipe the Calvary squad), doing enough wounds, 8 I believe, to realistically kill the squad when saving of 5+'s. My opponent didn't see it that way and rolled 6 5+ saves, only killing 2 marines leaving enough to wipe out the 5 man command squad in his turn. This dropped me to just a single primary in my final turn and denied me vital points.
Turn 4
End game
Turn 5 and the last few plays of the game. This was a short turn and again we didn't play out all of it, as there was little need. The one part we did play out was the final death throws of the Hellhammer. With bring it down in his hand my opponent needed to try and get the last few wounds off the big guy and after shooting everything that it could in to it, I was on 1 wound left. Charges were declared and so was overwatch. I knew that this was a long shot and wasn't going to stop the inevitable result, as there were two breads within easy charge range. The first one though tried his luck and was the second (or maybe even third) dread to be brought low by the mighty weapons of the Hellhammer, mostly the 4 heavy flamers, which really proved their worth this match. Bjorn however didn't fail and made short work of the Hellhammer.
End game
At this point there was little on the table, however it was mostly space wolves and some chunky units at that, including Bjorn, 6 terminators and a redemptor, who while injured had his attendant tech priest following him around. If the game had of gone on longer the weight of power would only have tipped further towards the wolves.
The score card
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